


The Adventures of Ros Myers, Space Spy

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Spooks | MI-5, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, cold-blooded spy going after cold-blooded snakes and life-sucking vampires, crossover so crazy it works?, no ros you can't shoot everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:50:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She didn't know what she'd done to deserve an assignment helping out the Americans, although it might have been a bad case of demonstrable competence. Nonetheless, she's assured that while the work will be outside her usual purview, she's more than qualified for the task. </p>
<p>They left out the part that explained that 'outside her usual purview' really meant 'not on Earth.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jabberwocky

Harry returns, storm-faced and the kind of silent that has an entire section's worth of hardened field agents and analysts shrinking in their seats to avoid his line of sight.   
  
Ros doesn't flinch, which is just as well, since she doesn't think Harry sees any of them as he stalks past on his way to his office.   
  
Adam, returning from either the loo or the office supplies cupboard, surveys the room, sees Harry moving about in his office, and cocks a questioning eyebrow at Ros, who shrugs. Whatever it is, it's not good and it will be on all of them soon enough. Adam first, though.   
  
Harry summons him three minutes later, long enough for everyone in Section D to exhale, relax, and wonder what could have gone so terribly wrong, who could have been so awesomely stupid. Harry doesn't get this angry at mere evil.   
  
Ros gets distracted by her own workload and misses the return of the room to some semblance of normal; chaos is their business and business is good. Whatever variety is coming their way now, well, someone is likely to have seen it before.   
  
"Ros? A moment?" Adam calls to her from Harry's open doorway.   
  
In the warm glow of hindsight, she will remember his mild expression and casual posture, summoning her like she's simply forgotten to sign one of her case files. His eyes twinkle in amusement as she passes him and she will remember that and think that he really had no fucking clue what was so funny about it at all.   
  


* * *

  
She's met at Reagan International by two men in service dress, field grade officers who are brisk and friendly in that puppy-like way that Americans are, as if the whole world is their potential new best friend.   
  
One of them offers to carry her bag, but she gives him a look and he shrugs as if to say that he was required to ask and didn't really think it a reasonable suggestion. They lead her to a black SUV with tinted windows, larger than her first flat, and explain that they will need to drive to Andrews Air Force Base to continue their journey. At Andrews, they board a Gulfstream that will take them to NORAD.   
  
Once they have taken off and the officers give her a few minutes, she suspects, to enjoy the view of the national capital from on high, they settle down to work.   
  
"How much do you know about why you're on this adventure, Ms. Myers?" Major Davis asks.   
  
"Not a thing," she answers honestly. She's been punted to the Americans for a classified mission of unknown duration, an operation so black that Harry can't find a shred of a clue as to what it is. ("The Americans aren't normally this proficient at keeping secrets," he'd scowled, peeved at his own ignorance and at his inability to keep her from this unknown fate.)   
  
By the time the plane lands in Colorado, she's sure this is a practical joke, that Adam will be waiting on the tarmac with a big grin and a bigger bottle of champagne and they'll board a jet back to the real world and one that does not involve extraterrestrial life forms.   
  
The only thing waiting for them is another black SUV with another nattily-dressed officer with his hand outstretched to shake.   
  
"Welcome to the Stargate Program, Ms. Myers."

 

  
  
_.... and from there she terrorizes the place ~~a little~~ a lot and gets punted to Atlantis because Jack thinks someone like her should be going along because the shit **will** hit the fan and marines tend to have one default reaction to that. Once there ends up telling John Sheppard to stay in the fucking puddle jumper and _ she _will get Sumner. She's been fantasizing about shooting a US military officer since she first got assigned to the Stargate program, but when she finally has to do it, her first reaction is to throw up._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's one more galaxy?

She carries the assimilated rank of lieutenant colonel. She's a little unclear if there's any official mechanism for this or if it's just O'Neill making things up as he goes along again, especially as neither Jackson nor Teal'c carry any sort of warrant or rank. But within the Stargate Program it doesn't really matter as O'Neill's word is effectively law.   
  
Back at the Mountain, it meant that the bevy of majors did what she told them to without questioning and, now that they are finally leaving for Atlantis, she finds herself expecting that Major Sheppard will do the same. He was pliant enough in the mobilization period, unwilling to put himself under the authority of Sumner and therefore keeping himself just out from underfoot of Weir, who dotes on him like a favored child.   
  
Elizabeth Weir had a very good career in the diplomatic corps, everyone says. Often. Ros, with her own prior career that frequently meant undoing the messes the US State Department created in the world, takes that to be a backhanded assessment of Weir's brief time as the SGC's chief and nothing in her personal interactions with the woman has changed that. Weir is pleasant, eager, and, for a woman who spent a year authorizing off-world missions and essentially prosecuting a secret war with the Goa'uld, shockingly optimistic about what awaits them in Pegasus.   
  
O'Neill sighed when Ros told him that while she understood that he wanted her along to provide competent leadership for investigation of the Pegasus galaxy, there was bloody little she could get done if they were led by a woman who expected to be greeted by the indigenous populations with leis and boxes of sweets. He assured her that Weir was far more competent and realistic than she looked and, besides, with Sumner bitching about the same things, Ros would have an ally.  
  
"It's a wonder you two don't get along better," O'Neill told her. "You certainly sound exactly alike."   
  
Except she doesn't have an ally, because one of the first things she has to do in Pegasus is kill Sumner. Which is ironic and terrible and, apart from the tragedy of it, leaves the marine contingent without a leader, a headless body of a not-very-bright creature. Ford is useless -- worse than useless; Ros has tried not to deal with him directly, afraid of those pitiful eyes full of unshed tears.   
  
(Making Ford cry the first time had been an accident and, as it happened in Antarctica before either of them had been assigned to the Atlantis mission, without meaningful consequence. The second time, however, brought her a meeting with O'Neill, one of _those_ meetings where he gets actually annoyed because he feels your behavior is not only counterproductive, but giving him more to do. Ros apologized, which made her a little relieved that the third time came in another galaxy and far from the General's disappointed gaze.)  
  
Weir understands that Ford cannot assume command of the military element in Atlantis; it is not even discussed. Ros expects Weir will suggest Sheppard, which is slightly less ridiculous but not by much, and Ros expects to counter by suggesting herself. She led teams of airmen at the Mountain and Weir herself headed up a military program. It would not be that much of a precedent to set and, here in a new galaxy, there is no reason to adhere to rules that only made sense in the old one.   
  
Weir does propose Sheppard, but she does so by giving Ros his service jacket to read.   
  
"Where is this man?" Ros asks her, gesturing to the laptop screen once she is finished reading. "He never arrived at the Mountain."  
  
Weir smiles at her, catlike. "In the aircraft bay, I believe."  
  
Ros goes to find him there, expecting to find the lazy, slouching man she got used to slinking around the halls of the SGC. She does not find him. Major Sheppard is there, slouching against the side of one of the spacecraft as an excited Spanish engineer prattles on in heavily-accented english, but he carries none of the "none of this concerns me at all" insouciance she'd learned to recognize from afar like a bad body odor.   
  
"Miz Myers," he drawls when he sees her, just enough of an emphasis on the honorific to let her know that yes, the rules have changed. She knows Weir hasn't said anything to him yet about assuming command of the marines, but it's clear he's taking that as his prerogative.   
  
"Major," she replies in kind, accepting the challenge. She has no plans to change her routine of expecting obedience out of the Stargate Program's bevy of O-4s; Sheppard may have to be handled differently, but handled he will be.


	3. Three things Ros Myers was surprised by in the Pegasus Galaxy

**1.There is nothing new under the sun(s).**  
  
The thing about the Milky Way galaxy is not that it's full of aliens. It's how very un-alien they all are. Even those societies that don't trace their roots back to Earth aren't very odd. They have socio-cultural norms that are recognizable, if not necessarily ones Ros would willingly adopt, and they generally live their lives in a way she could imagine taking place on Earth at some point in the past. The Goa'uld are warlords of recognizable stripes, their accouterments and peccadilloes not unfamiliar to someone who has spent the better part of two decades tracking and trafficking with military juntas, dictators, arms dealers, and the odd religious freak. She understands these creatures well, alien origin or not, and her success in the Stargate Program reflects that.  
  
Pegasus, however, is an entirely different ball of wax. The Goa'uld want power. The Wraith have power; they want lunch.  
  
You cannot negotiate when you are the entrée, although Ros is unsurprised to see that some do try. But most don't. And this, too, is not completely alien, although it takes Ros a bit to realize why it is familiar.  
  
They are finishing up a successful-but-unsatisfying visit with the Ortal, a pleasant agrarian society that is willing to trade wheat (or something close enough) to Atlantis in exchange for a visit from the zoologists who can pretend to be veterinarians. Ros has tried and failed to engage the Ortal leaders in a meaningful discussion of the Wraith - meaningful being anything that garners actionable intelligence and not just the usual defeatist palaver - when she hears Sergeant Markham sigh and mutter "insha'allah."  
  
And then it clicks. Because Markham, whose willingness to show off his encyclopedic knowledge of deviant pornography is not quite balanced out by his ability to fly the jumper competently, is not, despite all appearances, a complete idiot.  
  
She does not tell him this; he functions better when he fears her wrath. But she brings up his insight when talking to Weir and Sheppard, knowing that both will recognize the concept from their pre-SGC lives. They've both worked in the Middle East, seen and been frustrated by the particular fatalism that drives Westerners batty. Sheppard, who has been off-world in Pegasus enough to have seen it for himself, laughs. Weir, who does not travel among the peoples of Pegasus and thus retains a diplomat's worldview, looks speculative and smiles wryly. "Insha'allah" has a literal meaning, which is sometimes even how it is intended, but most of the time, it is a warning that if you are expecting something to happen, you are going to be sadly disappointed. It's not usually malevolence, although it is occasionally shocking laziness and the utter unwillingness to do more than the minimum, but it is the rule and not the exception. We are not masters of our own fate and thus there is no need to put in the extra effort because the results are not ours to decide.   
  
"Well, then," Weir says. "That's something we can work with."  
  
It is a sign of how they live in Pegasus that being able to recognize a pattern of behavior considered unproductive and inefficient is considered something of a victory.  
  
  
 **2\. She misses Ba'al.**  
  
The Wraith are a very pedestrian enemy. Their motives are straightforward, their means predictable (more or less), their results guaranteed by millennia of success. They are superior to Atlantis's forces by every conceivable metric and Ros is not unaware of how very dangerous that is, but they are a comfortable nemesis. See Wraith, kill Wraith.  
  
The marines, bless them, couldn't be happier. An uncomplicated opponent for an uncomplicated band of warriors. They don't have to worry about anything other than their ammo supply, which is perfectly well by them.  
  
Ros is a little embarrassed that she feels... underutilized in this fight for survival. She is an intelligence agent, one very good at her craft, and she does not have a worthy opponent. There are no potential moles to turn, no amount of espionage is required to discern the Wraith's ultimate goals, there is no degree of finesse or sophistication necessary to assess the situation.  
  
"It's like playing _Space Invaders_ ," McKay says once. "You don't have to be very smart, you just need a good feel for the joystick."  
  
At the time, he means it as a slight of Sheppard, who simple retorts that he liked _Pole Position_ better, but McKay is not wrong. Ros hated _Space Invaders_ , too, but here in Pegasus, it's the only game at the arcade.   
  
It's also not a game they are doing particularly well on, at least by the goals they've established for themselves. Which is why Ros really shouldn't be wishing for a better challenge -- it's turning over the board and announcing she doesn't want to play anymore because she's losing. But yet she does wish to do just that.  
  
If the Wraith are _Space Invaders_ , the Goa'uld, tacky and ridiculous in their stylings, are chess. They are inconstant and unpredictable and the end result is never a foregone conclusion, oftentimes not even a binary choice of "win/lose." Going up against the same opponent more than once brought additional challenges as well as additional advantages and, sometimes, an entirely different game altogether. The Goa'uld are ruled by their whimsy and their arrogance; their appetites are far less literal than the Wraith, who despite their walking upright and wearing clothes and carrying weapons and even, in some cases, speech, are not evolved from their insect forebears.  
  
Ros misses tradecraft, a skill set totally wasted on the entire Pegasus galaxy. She misses the respect of and for her opponents; Ba'al refused to kill her because he didn't want to rob himself of the joys of their conflicts. The Wraith simply don't care; Ros tastes as good as Ford or some miscellaneous Athosian.  
  
And therein lies the root of the matter: she wants an opponent where her cleverness, her physical and mental prowess, her experience and her intelligence _matter_ more than her aim and the blind luck of being 'not lunch' instead of 'lunch.'  
  
She wants to not feel helpless in a fight that will consume them all.  
  
  
 **3\. Life goes on without you.**  
  
When they come back to Earth the first time, after the debriefing and before the planning for returning begins, Ros gets a week to go back to the UK for personal leave. She flies Denver to Heathrow with Carson Beckett, who is quite content to train it up north. She wonders -- not aloud -- if he will actually meet her at the airport for the return flight. Carson on Earth is a younger man, almost illuminated from within by the joy of being back in familiar surroundings and being safe. He desperately misses his family, misses Scotland, and he admits in a whisper no one can overhear, so surprised at how much lighter he feels without the everpresent weight of the Wraith's threat upon him like a millstone.   
  
The siege scarred them all.  
  
"I think I could have flown here myself," he says with a self-deprecating smile. "Of course, I'd look a bit daft flapping my arms like wings. But I think I could have if they hadn't gotten us the flight."  
  
When they part at the Green Park underground station, he hugs her -- impulsively, since Ros has spent a year making it abundantly clear that she needs no comforting or cosseting from anyone -- and tells her to have a lovely time in Merry Old, then disappears into the just-arriving train.  
  
Ros has no blood relatives she especially wants to see, so she gets off at Vauxhall and goes to see the only family she actually misses.   
  
There are a few double-takes as she passes through security levels and signs in and a few surprised greetings of various warmth, but nobody asks where she's been. That's not done in this line of work and Ros is more grateful of that now than she used to be back when she was living in Colorado and commuting to the stars.  
  
From the outside, Section D is as she remembers it, all plexiglass and hissing hydraulics, but once she passes through the door, all familiarity ceases.  
  
She does not recognize a single face, all of which are turned toward her as if she were an alien visiting from afar. The irony of the matter does not escape her and she feels laughter bubbling up that she squashes ruthlessly because there's a good chance it might come out sounding hysterical.  
  
"My god, Ros, it is you."  
  
Malcolm, sweet, sweet Malcolm, puts down the file he is carrying to greet her like a prodigal princess. He grabs her hands and holds her at arm's length, looking her over for changes -- or for what he remembers and recognizes. Most of her wounds from the fight for Atlantis are hidden or healed; the SGC would never have let her go if she couldn't have traveled without raising too many questions. But she still wonders what Malcolm is looking for and what she is showing and whether they are at all commensurate.  
  
Whatever it is, he finds it acceptable and pulls her in to a hug that chips a bigger crack in her armor than she'd like to admit. It has been a year without any contact but violent, it seems, and she has forgotten how to accept gentleness.  
  
"Welcome home," he tells her as he pulls back. "Our Lord and Master awaits you with pleasure."  
  
She doesn't ask where Adam is; her visit is not a surprise and if he could have been here, he would have been. And despite technically still being a member of the unit, she is no longer entitled to all of its secrets -- such as where the head of section is.  
  
This does not mean that as they approach Harry's office and the angle of the blinds allows her to see a male back seated across from Harry that she does not hope that Adam is sitting in there waiting, a surprise to be unwrapped with the opening of the doors.  
  
She's been gone without word for more than a year; it was a little giddy-making to think of her return to Earth and to London as an intergalactic booty call, but she has no right to expect him to be interested or available.   
  
Which does not mean that she won't drag him off to the ladies' loo for a quick shag if he gives so much as a hint of interest.  
  
But the doors do not part to reveal Adam. Instead, there is a tall, dark, handsome stranger with sorrowful eyes and a wary expression. And Harry, who has not changed at all. He never does.  
  
"You have returned to the bosom of Mother Britain," Harry greets her, the aloof words and understated gestures a sharp contrast with the warmth of his eyes. "Hale and hearty, I trust."  
  
"Nothing a couple of pints can't correct," she replies as she accepts his hand to shake. The other man steps forward hesitantly, as if he's not sure Ros will have anything to do with him once she knows who he is.  
  
"Ros, this is Lucas North, another prodigal son," Harry introduces and it takes Ros a moment for the name to ping. Good god, he's the fellow the Russians got in... 2000? 1999? The cautionary tale for every British agent -- don't assume they'll rescue you right away. Or at all. But clearly, someone did. "Lucas, this is Ros Myers, one of our very best."  
  
"Which is why you punted me to the Americans and haven't let me back since," she retorts tartly. She's stopped resenting it years ago, but it is a part she has to play -- sacrificial lamb for the Cousins and not grateful space-spy.   
  
"Delighted," North murmurs -- rumbles, really -- and offers his hand. "Your legend precedes you."  
  
She does not say that the same could be said of him. He undoubtedly already knows.  
  
"Lucas is our head of section," Harry explains and waits for the information to process.   
  
Ros takes a step back once it does, the realization coming like a blow. "He's dead, isn't he. Adam."  
  
He could have retired to take care of Wes, but it's unlikely. Adam loved his son with a simple and unconditional purity, but this life was his calling.  
  
"November," Harry answers. "Remembrance Day, actually. He saved thousands of lives."  
  
"Of course he did," she says, words sharp to her own ears. "It's who he was."  
  
She's angry, she realizes. At Adam. For turning what was supposed to be a relief from the death and sorrow of the Wraith siege, from the privations of Pegasus, into its continuation. She came back to London to look for someone for whom she did not have to be strong, someone she felt safe enough with to let her lay her burdens down for just a little while. But she can't because Adam is dead, gone a hero. And she is selfish for resenting that as a personal inconvenience, so she turns her anger inward.   
  
Harry tells her what happened, where Adam is buried (next to Fiona, which is as it should be), and that Wes is with Adam's sister and her family and won't have to ever worry about anything financial. That North wasn't the immediate replacement, instead he is replacing Ann Sutherby, recalled from Algiers for the job she held four months before her death at the hands of the FSB. Ros accepts the details -- Ann was a good acquaintance -- with what she hopes is good grace. Harry asks her if she'll be free this evening for dinner -- or any evening this week. Her instinct is to say no, but that's her anger talking, so she says yes, tonight will be fine.  
  
Harry dismisses them both -- apologetically, but he is too busy and she knows it -- and North escorts he back into the pit.  
  
"It doesn't get easier," he says to her quietly -- does the man ever raise his voice to audible levels? -- before they part at the plexiglass doors. "To be endlessly confronted with all that has happened in your absence."  
  
She turns to him -- on him, really, ready to lash out at his unwanted advice. Expert though it may be. But she looks at his eyes, concerned and a little deadened, and she stops herself. She wonders if that's what she'd see in her own if she bothered to look too close in a mirror.  
  
"It doesn't get easier," he repeats. "You just get better at covering the tender spots."  
  
It's cold comfort -- and terrible advice so far as healthy behavior is concerned. But Ros has never been a model for healthy behavior and she wonders if North recognizes that as a kindred spirit or just because that's what the house gossip says.  
  
Ros nods and smiles a little bitterly, feeling brittle in a way she hadn't before.  
  
He offers her his mobile number in case she wants to talk.  
  
"I'm a familiar stranger," he explains when she cocks an eyebrow at him. "I won't get offended by the meaningful silences."  
  
She thanks him again and pockets the paper. She's not sure she'll call or, if she does, whether she'll seek out a less complicated and more physical comfort from him. Her gut says he wouldn't turn it down if she offered.  
  
One of the other unfamiliar faces calls for him and he turns, making his apologetic farewell and Ros is alone once more. Malcolm is not visible and she does not have the energy to face his kindness right now. So instead she leaves, goes out into the weak sunshine and pushes in to the crowds that still feel strange after a year of Pegasus, and starts rebuilding her armor.


End file.
